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In a room full of toys above an Anglican church, “The Goodbye Song” echoed against flamboyantly painted walls: “We’re glad you came to daycare,” went the ditty. “We’re sad to see you go.”

The end-of-day routine at the Messiah Daycare at Avenue Rd. and Dupont St. was carried out for the last time on Friday. Many of the kids are heading off to the newly minted full-day kindergarten program at the neighbourhood school, and the not-for-profit can no longer make ends meet.

So after 34 years, the daycare is closing down.

“We haven’t made a profit, so there wasn’t a lot of reserve to increase the number of toddlers,” said Diana Heath, president of the church board, who’s been involved with the daycare since it opened its doors in 1979.

“It would have been too difficult to run the centre.”

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With classes set to resume after Labour Day, this school year will be the fourth since former premier Dalton McGuinty announced the rollout of full-day kindergarten in the province.

Messiah Daycare director Jennifer Adams gets a final goodbye hug from Emory, 3, left, and her brother, Finn, 4. The daycare closed Friday because all-day kindergarden will be taking away its preschool-aged kids and it won't be economical to keep the daycare running without them. (Richard Lautens / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

The Education ministry has pledged that all public elementary schools will have the program by September 2014, but at least two school boards — Peel and Halton — have indicated they might not be ready by then.

As fewer school-age children need daycare, spots open up for younger kids. The problem is that younger kids cost more to care for, while many parents can’t afford the higher daycare fees for infants and toddlers, said Calver. That means not-for-profit child care centres can have a tough time filling vacancies, she said.

“If you can’t find those families, then the whole (daycare) centre is not viable,” she said.

“It’s a big change to ask child care centres to go through, but without limiting the fees, it’s really hard to find those families that can actually afford the full cost.”

Messiah Daycare director Jennifer Adams said part of the problem at her centre was that many people in the neighbourhood either have nannies for their kids, or can’t afford the fees for daily care.

“Our fees would have had to have gone up, and for our area, it doesn’t make sense,” said Adams, director for 13 years. “It’s been hard.”

Parents picking their kids up at Messiah were melancholic about the centre’s closure.

“I haven’t found anything at all that’s comparable,” said Clare Sant, who has two kids at Messiah. “If I was a working mom, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Emily Moore, mother of two children at the centre, echoed Sant. “There aren’t any openings anywhere, so it ends up being what you can get, you go there.”

According to Toronto Children’s Services, the city has 24,000 subsidized child care spaces, while the waiting list stands at 19,104. The average cost of per day to put an infant in child care in Toronto ranges from $62 to $95.50, according to Children’s Services. For toddlers it’s $48 to $85.

“It’s changing the business model,” said Greg Humphreys, government relations committee chair for the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario, describing how older kids’ fees at child care centres would “subsidize” the cost of caring for younger kids.

“Removing large numbers of 4- and 5-year-olds from the equation has definitely undermined the financial viability of a lot of centres,” he said.

The proliferation of full-day kindergarten in Toronto is also adding pressure to the providers of before- and after-school daycare programs.

As the Star reported in August, the Sunnyside Garden Daycare Centre at Garden Ave. Public School has refused to renew its contract with the Toronto District School Board. The daycare is arguing it can’t handle 39 more spots for kindergarten students on top of the 80 it already has.

The TDSB has 144 before- and after-school daycare programs this fall, while the Toronto Catholic board has 30, according to its website.

Construction on kindergarten classrooms at 10 TDSB schools will not be complete when school starts Tuesday. “Alternate classroom set-ups” will be available for all students and no before- and after-school daycare programs will be disrupted, said board spokesman Ryan Bird.

“We’re providing alternate space to the limited number of programs that may be affected,” he said. “There should be no concerns.”

Bird added that construction should be finished within “a few weeks.”

The 10 schools affected by the building delays are Norseman, General Crear, Mason Road, Warden, Hillcrest, Regent Heights, St. Andrew, Malvern, Meadowvale and Rosethorn public schools.

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